In the world of online businesses, your website plays a huge role. Since your website acts as your virtual storefront, you need to make sure that it has the power to attract visitors, encourage them to explore your website further and ultimately make the desired action – no matter what it is.
However, if your website is not created or designed well enough, this will simply not be possible. Having a website is not the same as having a good website.
So, if you notice that your website is not achieving its intended purpose or driving the desired results, it may be high time you look at your website design and try to identify places that need some restructuring.
Most commonly, one of the biggest flaws of websites lies in their design. Luckily, however, website design is quite easy to polish and perfect, so that it works in your favor.
That being said, here are the top 9 reasons for website redesign and improve not only its look but functionality and performance as well.
Your design is outdated or unpleasant
When visiting a website, visitors expect to be met with a visually-appealing design that’s easy on the eye. On top of that, they also expect the website to be easy to skim through in search of relevant information. So, if your website is all jumbled up, features unpleasant colors, or is simply overcrowded with visuals – or entirely lacks them – chances are your visitors will simply abandon your page and take their search elsewhere.
That’s why you need to make sure you implement a design that’s pleasant, attention-grabbing, and stands out from the rest of the crowd. As far as the outdated part is concerned, if you can’t remember the last time you updated your website, or it’s been well over a year since the last time you did it, it’s high time you make some updates – not just to your design but the overall performance as well.
Your website lacks CTA
You need to make sure that your visitors get a clear picture of the actions they’re expected to take once they land on your website. That’s where CTA (call to action) comes into play. But if your website lacks CTA, you can’t really expect your visitors to perform the action you intend them to. Therefore, make sure that your CTAs are quite clear and obvious from the get-go, and consider website redesign if that’s not the case.
Keep in mind that CTA can be anything from subscribing to your newsletter and making a call, to making a purchase or leaving a review. So, while you certainly want your CTAs to be quite obvious and easily noticeable, you also want to make sure you don’t overstuff your pages with them. Needless to say, a carefully planned website redesign will help you remedy these issues in no time.
It lacks credibility
In the online business world, credibility and trust play major roles. Since your website is the first part of your business, your visitors will come across with, you need to make sure that it’s legit. Unless your visitors find your website credible, they most likely won’t proceed to interact with it.
That’s why you need to find ways to boost the credibility of your website – and, in turn, your business. You can easily achieve this by showcasing customer reviews and testimonials, displaying logos of your clients and simply telling your audience why they should trust your business.
It’s not SEO friendly
Your website will virtually have no purpose if it’s not SEO-friendly. In this day and age, SEO plays a vital part in any business’s success. Since SEO will help you rank higher on search engines, boost visibility, attract more customers and boost credibility, it is certainly something you need to pay more attention to.
Therefore, make sure you optimize your website’s content properly. To name just a few ways you can do this, you should add relevant keywords and phrases to your content, meta descriptions, and title tags. You should also optimize your visuals and follow them up with correct alt tags. Include your target keywords in web page titles and remove any broken or irrelevant links from your website.
It relies on outdated technology
Just like your website shouldn’t contain any outdated elements, it also shouldn’t rely on outdated technology. If you’ve created your website using Flash, for instance, it will become practically useless or inaccessible for the majority of modern users.
That’s why you need to do a thorough check of your website and identify any outdated solutions – software or other – it may be featuring. Naturally, replace all of those elements with modern and relevant software solutions and tech for peak performance.
It’s slow
According to modern users, there’s hardly anything that’s more annoying than a website that takes forever to fully load. Ideally, you should aim at reaching the website loading speed of three seconds or less.
Needless to say, if you optimize all of your content and pages properly, your loading speed shouldn’t be an issue. But keep in mind that the majority of your website visitors will come from mobile platforms, which means you’ll need to optimize the loading speed of your website for both desktop and mobile users.
It fails to serve its purpose
As we’ve already mentioned, every website should have its intended purpose. If your website fails to serve its purpose accordingly, that means it’s high time for a website redesign.
However, in order to be able to determine which areas of your website are failing to perform, you will most likely need to run thorough research, until you manage to identify all of those areas. Once you do that, create a strategy that will enable you to redesign and update them all in the most time-efficient manner to avoid any unnecessary downtime.
There’s no sign of your brand
In order for your visitors to be able to connect and relate to your brand, your website needs to showcase your brand in the first place. So, if your brand message, promise, and core values are not obviously stated on your website, your visitors won’t be able to see what your brand truly stands for.
Needless to say, use your website to showcase your brand and let it shine, as that’s the only way your visitors will be inclined to form a meaningful and lasting relationship with your business.
It’s difficult and costly to maintain
Finally, if you notice that maintaining or updating your website is becoming increasingly difficult or costly, it’s high time for your website redesign.
In order to be able to attract visitors, your website needs to be regularly updated with fresh content. Otherwise, people will simply have no reason to come back to your site. But if those updates take too long or are particularly tricky to implement, you’ll need to do something about it sooner rather than later. Luckily, nowadays, there are a plethora of useful tools on the market that can help you out.
So, if you’re wondering whether or not your website is in desperate need of a redesign, chances are that the answer is yes. If that’s the case, identify the areas and elements of your website that need to be redesigned or updated and get down to work. The sooner you manage to boost your website and improve the overall experience it offers to your visitors, the sooner you’ll start to notice numerous positive changes.
Author
Adrien Cyrus is a digital marketing specialist and graphic engineer from Clinton, New Jersey. Interested in corporate branding, digital marketing, and graphic design.
He writes business-related articles, most notably for DigitalStrategyOne.